Remember when I said these “Throwback Reviews” would often be about the story instead of the figure?  Well that’s certainly the case here.  The most interesting thing about the figure is the orange card / gold logo transition card.  If you want to read the long history of the orange transition cards, I wrote about them in the POTF2 Death Star Gunner review.  If you want the short version, these orange cards were sort of unintended “chase” variants.  Like most card variants and most POTF2 figures, no one cares today.  I like owning these orange card variants very much as a reminder of this crazy time in the hobby.

The figure itself stinks, as you’d expect for an early POTF2 figure.  As a loose figure, it’s as useless as an Art History degree.  It’s a bulky 6POA piece of nonsense.  The paint apps on the Stormtrooper helmet are about as subtle as naming the only fat X-Wing pilot “Porkins.”  In that sense, it’s reminiscent of vintage Star Wars figures which were often based on the “spirit” of the character as opposed to any sort of highly faithful recreation.  But you can only be “vintage” once.  After that, you’re substandard (and suspect).  It’s a 2 out of 10.

The “story” part of this figure, which is a personal story, has to do with the true vintage POTF ‘85 Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper Disguise figure.  I didn’t know that figure existed until 1995 when the line was relaunched.  I would have been blown away if I did have that figure as a kid, but by the time the POTF ‘85 line was rolling out, I had moved on from Star Wars toys.  It wasn’t entirely my choice.  I was teased pretty heavily as a kid for my love of Star Wars toys.  Little did I know, and as is often the case, those who teased me most unmercifully were big Star Wars fans themselves.  Deflection is a human instinct.  I’m not bitter about what I went through as a kid.  What’s past is prologue.  It’s all led me to this website and all you wonderful weirdos.

Nonetheless, I missed the opportunity to experience the vintage Kenner Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper Disguise when toys were still just toys to me.  By the time I found out about its existence, loose complete samples were already fetching north of one hundred dollars (which might as well have been ten thousand dollars to me at the time), and that’s why this POTF2 release is special to me.  It served as the rare “make up call” in life.  How sweet is that?

One last footnote:  Once I rejected Star Wars toys in the early eighties, I did my best to hide my nerdish leanings.  Then something wonderful happened.  Kevin Smith made the movie Mallrats, and the coolest cat in that movie, Brodie, was a nerd of epic proportions.  If Brodie Bruce could be cool and still give a breakdown of Wolverine’s berserker attack, I was no longer going to hide this side of me.  I AM WHO I AM.  SCREW YOU GUYS FOR JUDGING ME!

Made by our own Darth Dre